Police officials with the arrested persons. Seized lorries also seen.
Mancherial: In a joint operation, sleuths of Task Force and Luxettipet and Hajipur police arrested eight persons for allegedly diverting rice meant for the public distribution system on Monday.
As many as 485 quintals of rice, two trucks, three mobile phones and cash amount of Rs 20,000 were recovered from them. The value of the commodity is assessed to be of Rs 13.09 lakh. Another accused is at large, said the police.
Task Force Inspector T Kiran said that the arrested were identified as Gunda Nagarjuna, Palakurthi Venkatesh and Gunda Rajanna, all belonging to Luxettipet, Mayur Ala and Hameer Kumar, drivers from Gujarath and Rachakonda Mahesh, a resident of Rebbena mandal, Azas Iqbal of Virur in Maharashtra, Hasad Bin Mohammad from Kaghaznagar. Yunis Khan, a resident of Kaghaznagar is still at large.
The sleuths conducted raids on certain spots where the rice was stored under the limits of Luxettipet and Hajipur police stations, following a tip-off. The eight were taken into custody for trying to ship the rice by the trucks to Gujarat and Maharashtra States.
Ramagundam Commissioner of Police V Satyanarayana warned that none would be spared if found diverting or smuggling the PDS rice. Sub-Inspectors of Task Force Lachanna, Ch Kiran, staffers Sampath Kumar, Sadanandam, Venkatesh, Omkar, Srinivas, Rakesh, Luxettipet Sub-Inspector Dattadri and his counterpart of Hajipur Chandrasekhar took part in the operation.
Now you can get handpicked stories from Telangana Today onTelegrameveryday. Click the link to subscribe.